Sunday, July 28, 2024

Europeans as indigenous islanders

This weekend I picked up Christina Thompson, Sea People. Which has the alt-title "Puzzle of Polynesia". Before I finish this, I take issue with the Polynesians as the last people to settle lands outside their own.

We would be dismissing Barbados and the Azores as found by people who then lost those lands - Arawaks and Vikings respectively - alongside all those uncounted Pacific atolls. Fine. We are still left with the Gálapagos, São Tomé, Bermuda, Saint-Helena, the Falklands, Kerguelen... actually pretty much all the islands south of Tasman's, and one whole continent (if a chilly continent).

I think that Europeans should count also as "people".

BACKDATE end-o'July.

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